101 Words

School recess. Girls turn skipping ropes in Double Dutch. Boys chase each other in Cops and Robbers. Voices jubilant. Energy boundless. Children engaged in games I never played as a child.

Not running as I ran from sniper bullets. Calculated bombs. Strategies designed by grownups, played out by children. Forced to participate in their game of pull and push.

We excelled in Hide-and-Seek. In places breathing death and destruction. When our strategies were discovered, rows of hopes tumbled as tiles would fall in Dominoes. Game over.

My son runs up, tags me. “You’re it!” he hollers.

I’m in a better game.

She lived in a shack, if you could call the ramshackle geometry of aluminum and cork a shack. It almost blocked the rain and, if the naked mattress was collapsed and a bit mildewed, at least it was mostly dry.

She never lacked for visitors. It didn’t matter that she was Indian or had a pack of children scavenging round the place like stray dogs. The fact that she rarely spoke to anyone—and when she did, her accent was so thick as to be almost completely unintelligible—spoke highly in her favor.

She was the most beautiful widow in town.

Through the cracks in the slats of the fence that bordered the property, she watched as he hammered and tore, then dug and deposited the framework of a man, a man she once knew well.

The mass filled the trench to capacity and then pulled an earthly shroud tight around it. She held her breath, she gasped, she screamed — ever so silently.

As the steps trudged away a door closed. She crawled under the hedgerow and came upon the scene. She plucked a rose and laid it to sleep along with him.

A temporary living companion, in moments she’d be next.

A year had gone by, and through extreme effort I had managed to accrue a pound of gold. I gave an old wizard my aurous profit that he may let me look down into his viewing well, a well that would reveal a man’s paramount misstep in life, be it future or past. The water below stirred then settled, and I shuddered when I saw my image appear and in motion. Yes! Now fate would be overturned; the future would be undone and reinvented.

In the reflection I entered a room with a well. I handed my gold to a wizard.

Being cliche isn’t bad. It’s something everyone relates to so well that they don’t want to see it anymore. Well, that’s me.

I’m what you don’t want to see: bum, vagrant, derelict. Poets say I’m ‘adding color’, but I’m just white noise, not a person. I’m just the periphery that they’d rather not think about.

People ‘know’ about homelessness, but not the pressure. Getting beat up, overdosing, getting knifed over food: symptoms of that pressure constantly pushing down. Still, there’s miles of unused tunnels and sewers below.

People above don’t want me, but the city below is ready to embrace me.

The assassin stalked his prey. He watched from a distance so as not to spook the target. He was very good at what he did, maybe one of the best. Rarely did he fail to find and eliminate his target. Over the years, he had developed the discipline to be able to track his prey and to terminate them.

The assassin’s current prey had eluded him all morning. He would soon take the shot that would finish the job. Suddenly, the target appeared and was very close. The assassin took deadly aim and fired.

WHAP!! Success! One more pesky fly gone!